Heweon Seo, Ph.D., LP
Group Coordinator and International Student Specialist
University Buffalo Counseling Services
When I was in my doctoral training to become a counseling psychologist, I would experience anxiety whenever my clients missed appointments and I would question my competence. In hindsight, most of this anxiety was developmentally normal. However, as a Korean international student, I questioned my competence most when white clients missed their appointments. Was my accent too strong for them to understand me? Were they not comfortable because I am not white? I saw my differences as deficiencies – barriers I could not overcome. Although I deeply appreciate my clinical supervisors (all white except one), none of them helped me address these concerns. Indeed, some of their responses inadvertently reinforced my internalized racism and nativism, further exacerbating my anxiety and concerns about my future career.
Ironically, those aspects of myself that contributed to my worries – my non-white background and Korean language skills – helped me secure a job offer, even before I completed my degree. My first (and current) position is as a psychologist specializing in working with international populations in a university counseling center. When I started this position, I continued to experience struggles. For example, I had the mother of a white student call the center to question my competence because my name sounded foreign, and a student requested to change their counselor because of my accent. Supervisors I’d had previously may have made me feel that this was my fault – I had failed to provide acceptable services to the clients. However, for the first time in my career, my supervisor was a Black counseling psychologist. She directly named these experiences as instances of racism and microaggression. She got frustrated at the other people and the systems that produce and maintain their views; she did not blame me. By helping me externalize these experiences and locate the problem in the system rather than in me, she empowered me. She also showed her genuine interest in and appreciation for my clinical work as a Korean international psychologist. This helped me to appreciate my unique attributes and strengths as an Asian international person. As I have advanced in my career, I have benefitted from this transformative experience. Now, as a psychologist and supervisor, I am dedicated to empowering my clients and supervisees with marginalized identities in the way my boss did for me.
This should not be a task only for people with marginalized identities. Diversity cannot be celebrated without recognizing the experiences of oppression, stereotyping, and microaggression as a result of people’s identities. To create a culturally inclusive and empowering environment, everyone needs to understand how these factors (and more) can shape the experiences of those with marginalized identities. And it is important to recognize that we are all impacted by the systems we operate in. These systems create and reinforce ideas about others (e.g., stereotypes) in ways we are not often aware of. When problems arise, it is important to consider how these factors can shape our own judgments in ways that may inadvertently harm those with marginalized identities. This is the first step to empowering those with marginalized identities and can lead to a true appreciation of our differences.
